Attention On the ItemNov29

Brooks Jordan 0 comments

Robert Scoble, now with his own Scoble Show, has a recent video interview with two of the engineers at Google responsible for Google Reader. It's worth a look.

I played with Google Reader, which I haven't before, while I listened (and half watched) the video. They've done a really nice job (and that's what I really think, because I can't say the same about Google Calendar) of putting the feeds in front of you so that they flow and you can keep them organized.

But what's really interesting about it is that you can share items from different feeds with other people. How does that work? Well, if you've subscribed to three different feeds in Google Reader - think of three of your favorite feeds in the reader you use now - then as you're scolling thorough the items (posts) of one of them, you can click a little icon at the bottom of the item that says, "Share."

Clicking "Share" puts the item into what is essentially a new "Share" feed that is viewable, like your original three feeds, in Google Reader, but they also give you a URL for a separate HTML page, an Atom feed that you can subscribe to, or javascript for a widget you can add to a blog or whatever that lists these shared items. Very cool.

What's cool about it is that it means you can dissect feeds at the level of item and say, Hey, I think this specific piece of information is important, and I want to share it with somebody else. I doubt it was terrifically hard to do, but it's exactly what you need to be able to do as a user - work with items - and I don't think I've seen it anywhere else, and, as I said, they got the interface right.

I'd say Google Reader is now a great example of how a person who consumes a lot of information through the use of feeds can be aided in paying attention to the right things. And, not surprisingly, the topic of attention is touched upon in the interview.